I couldn't agree more. Personally I find CRAN to be a mess. There's no organization to it. You can only find something in there by googling. Also the documentation of R packages is very spartan...
On Thursday, January 22, 2015 at 7:49:40 PM UTC+1, Ista Zahn wrote: > > As an R user I'm surprised to see CRAN held up as a model to aspire > to. There is a _lot_ of overlapping functionality among those 6k > packages, making it hard to figure out which one is "best" for a > particular purpose. There are also a lot of unfocused packages > providing miscellaneous collections of functions, which makes it > difficult to understand exactly what the package offers you as a user. > As a user things are easier if a) each package has a clearly defined > scope (i.e., "does one thing well"), and b) there are not too many > similar packages to choose from for any particular task. None of this > is to say that julia isn't on the right track in terms of packages, > just that I question the wisdom of emulating CRAN in this regard. > > Best, > Ista > > On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 7:46 PM, Iain Dunning <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > > Yes indeed Christoph, a package that doesn't work is a package that > might as > > well not exist. Fortunately, and fairly uniquely I think, we can > quantify to > > some extent how many of our packages are working, and the degree to > which > > they are. > > > > In my mind the goal now is "grow fast and don't break too many things", > and > > I think our pace over the last month or so of around 1 package per day > is > > fantastic, with good stability of packages (i.e. they pass tests). I've > also > > noticed that packages being registered now are often of a higher quality > > than they used to be, in terms of tests and documentation. I talked > about > > this a bit at JuliaCon, but in some sense NPM and CRAN represent > different > > ends of a spectrum of possibilities, and it seems like the consensus is > more > > towards CRAN. So, we're doing good I think. > > > > > > On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 7:02 PM, Kevin Squire <[email protected] > <javascript:>> > > wrote: > >> > >> Additional references: PyPI lists 54212 packages, currently (roughly > half > >> as many as node) but, CRAN only has 6214. > >> > >> Cheers, > >> Kevin > >> > >> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 3:37 PM, Sean Garborg <[email protected] > <javascript:>> > >> wrote: > >>> > >>> You wouldn't like node ;) > >>> > >>> On Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 4:29:53 PM UTC-7, Christoph Ortner > >>> wrote: > >>>> > >>>> Great that so many are contributing to Julia, but I would question > >>>> whether such a large number of packages will be healthy in the long > run. It > >>>> will make it very difficult for new users to use Julia effectively. > >> > >> > > > > > > > > -- > > Iain Dunning > > PhD Candidate / MIT Operations Research Center > > http://iaindunning.com / http://juliaopt.org >
